Apple uses a subset of the standard PC architecture, which provides support for Mac OS X and support for other operating systems. Hardware and firmware components that must be supported to run an operating system on Apple-Intel hardware include the Extensible Firmware Interface.

The first software to take advantage of this technology was Parallels Desktop for Mac, which was released in June 2006. VMware offers a similar product, called Fusion, which was released August 2007. There are many subtle differences between the two products; however, regardless of the product used, there are always likely to be some limitations and inconveniences of using a virtualized guest OS, versus the native solution offered by Boot Camp. Therefore the best choice depends on the circumstances. Though, both Parallels and VMware's virtualization products allow users to use native (boot camp installations) of Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7 in a virtualized mode while running OS X.

VirtualBox is another virtualization software from Oracle Corporation, which was released January 2007. Available for multiple host operating systems, including Mac OS X, that can run multiple other guest operating systems, including Windows XP/Vista/7. VirtualBox is available free of charge, under either a proprietary license or the GPLfree software license. VirtualBox also supports Intel VT-x.

Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) is the firmware-based replacement for the PC BIOS from Intel. Designed by Intel, it was chosen by Apple to replace Open Firmware, used on PowerPC architectures. Since many operating systems, such as Windows XP and many versions of Windows Vista, are incompatible with EFI, Apple has released a firmware upgrade with a compatibility support module that provides a subset of traditional BIOS support with their Boot Camp product.

GUID Partition Table (GPT) is a standard for the layout of the partition table on a physical hard disk. It is a part of the Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) standard proposed by Intel as a substitute for the more common PC BIOS. The GPT replaces the Master Boot Record (MBR) used with BIOS.

Intel Macs can boot in two ways: directly via EFI, or in a "legacy" BIOS compatibility mode. For multibooting, holding down "Option" gives a choice of bootable devices, while the rEFItbootloader is commonly used for added configurability.

Standard Live USBs cannot be used on IntelMacs; the EFI firmware can recognize and boot from USB drives, but it can only do this in EFI mode–when the firmware switches to BIOS mode, it no longer recognizes USB drives, due to lack of a BIOS-mode USB driver. Many operating systems, such as Windows and Linux,[1] can only be booted in BIOS mode, or are more easily booted or perform better when booted in BIOS mode, and thus USB booting on IntelMacs is largely limited to Mac OS X, which can easily be booted via EFI. This limitation could be fixed by either patching the Apple firmware to include a USB driver in BIOS mode, or the operating systems to remove the dependency on the BIOS.

Dont Steal Mac OS X.kext, sometimes referred to as DSMOS or DSMOSX, is a file present in Intel-capable versions of the Mac OS Xoperating system which enforces a form of Digital Rights Management, preventing Mac OS X being installed on stock PCs. The name of the kext is a reference to the Mac OS X license conditions, which allow installation on one piece of Apple hardware only. According to Apple, anything else is stealing Mac OS X. The kext is located at /System/Library/Extensions on the volume containing the operating system.[4] The extension contains a kernel function called page_transform() which performs AES decryption of "apple-protected" programs. A Mac OS X system which is missing this extension, or a system where the extension has determined it's not running on Apple hardware, will be missing this decryption capability, and as a result will not be able to run the Apple-restricted binaries Dock, Finder, loginwindow, SystemUIServer, mds, ATSServer, backupd, fontd, translate, or translated.[5]